Recycled, Recyclable, or Just Wishful Thinking?

Understand the difference between recycled, recyclable, and recycling, and why it matters for carbon, compliance, and credibility in building materials.

What Building Materials Manufacturers Need to Know About Carbon, Claims, and Circularity

As the construction sector races to decarbonise, manufacturers are facing a fundamental shift: it’s no longer enough to say your product is sustainable, you need to prove it.

With architects, builders, certifiers and governments all demanding better carbon data, the language we use matters. Yet many in the industry still blur three critical terms that carry very different implications for product design, carbon performance, and market access: recycling, recyclable, and recycled content. They might sound similar, but they play very different roles when it comes to embodied carbon.

Let’s unpack what each one means — and why it matters more than ever.

Recycling: The Process That Closes the Loop

Recycling is not a claim. It’s an industrial process — one that takes waste and turns it into usable input material, ideally displacing virgin resources. In construction, it looks like:

Steel scrap melted and reformed in electric arc furnaces
Demolished concrete crushed for use as recycled aggregate
Plastic offcuts re-pelletised for use in moulding
Timber chipped or reused for boards or secondary construction.

There are two core types of recycling:

Closed-loop: the waste becomes the same type of product again (e.g. aluminium cladding into new cladding)
Open-loop (downcycling): the material is used in a different application — like PET bottles turned into insulation, strapping or carpet fibre.

The carbon advantage? When recycling displaces virgin extraction emissions can drop significantly.

The watch out:Complex reprocessing and transport can add embodied carbon back in. So documenting the recycling process emissions must be realistic, repeatable, and backed by data.

Recyclable: Potential ≠ Performance

Recyclable materials can be recovered — but that doesn’t mean they will be. And in today’s regulatory and certification landscape, potential isn’t enough. Take a closer look:

Aluminium, steel, and glass are highly recyclable — but only if uncontaminated
Timber and plasterboard can be reused, but adhesives and finishes often prevent recovery
Composite materials (metal-plastic laminates, insulated panels, coated membranes) are technically recyclable, but rarely recycled due to processing complexity or lack of infrastructure.

The key point: recyclability is meaningless without a recovery pathway. Claims must reflect real-world systems, not theoretical possibilities. That means considering contamination risks, design for disassembly, and whether local infrastructure can actually do the job. Credible manufacturers are going beyond vague claims — they’re building product stewardship schemes and take-back programs that turn possibility into performance.

The carbon advantage? With effort, theoretically recyclable materials can be leveraged for a meaningful second life.Innovative manufacturers like Tetrapak and saveBOARD have tackled composite materials recovery to create new off-take pathways to turn theory into practice.

The watch out: Recyclability falls outside of a cradle-to gate carbon claim because it has not happened yet.But building for disassembly and recyclability is still best practice.

Recycled Content: Where Carbon Savings Start

If there’s one metric that delivers real carbon value within a cradle-to-gate assessment right now, it’s recycled content.

Recycled content refers to the percentage of a product made from previously used material, measured by weight or volume. It can be:

Pre-consumer (industrial scrap, offcuts, rework)
Post-consumer (waste recovered from use, like steel from demolition or bottles from kerbside collection)

This isn’t just a feel-good stat. Under ISO 14067, the global standard for Product Carbon Footprinting, recycled content is modelled using the cut-off approach:

Recycled inputs carry no upstream emissions
Only reprocessing and transport emissions are counted.

For manufacturers, this is the fast lane to carbon credibility, and a competitive edge with procurement teams and sustainability certifiers alike.

The carbon advantage?

So the more verified recycled material in your product, the lower the carbon footprint. Here’s how that stacks up:

The watch out: If pre-consumer waste is recycled within the same process chain in the same factory, it's often not considered a recycled material for LCA purposes. The environmental benefits are instead attributed to the reduced waste and virgin material use.

Why This Matters More Than Ever

Low-carbon procurement is no longer a niche, it’s a megatrend. Governments are setting minimum recycled content thresholds. Architects are filtering suppliers by carbon data. Green Star and NABERS are rewarding verified low-impact materials.

If you don’t understand the difference between recyclable and recycled, you risk greenwashing, or worse, being cut from the shortlist. If you can’t quantify recycled content, you’re leaving real carbon savings (and market share) on the table. If you design for recyclability but don’t enable the process through stewardship or infrastructure, the loop never closes, and your claim falls flat.

From Claims to Carbon Confidence

For manufacturers in the built environment, the pressure to decarbonise is only going to grow. Whether you're supplying into infrastructure, housing, or commercial construction, the message from clients is consistent: carbon data matters, and recycled content is one of the most immediate ways to reduce it.

But meaningful progress requires more than just good intentions. It means:

Knowing exactly what’s in your products
Understanding how material choices affect embodied emissions
Verifying your claims in line with recognised standards like ISO 14067.

This is where digital tools like Rebuilt come in — turning fragmented material and emissions data into clear, auditable insights. Helping manufacturers not only meet growing compliance demands but position their products for the low-carbon market ahead.

Whether you're mapping out Product carbon, preparing for Green Star, or simply wanting to track the impact of recycled content across your product line, now’s the time to move from claims to clarity.

Learn more at rebuilt.eco